He doesn’t know when it started.

Maybe it was the day you sat by the window in the library, legs crossed, scribbling in the margins of your book like you were arguing with it. Or maybe it was before that —when you laughed at something someone said in Herbology, and he turned, instinctively, just to see what happiness looked like on you.

You’ve barely spoken. A few words, maybe. Something about forgotten parchment or trading places in line. Nothing that should’ve meant anything.

And yet.

You’re everywhere now. Not loudly. Not the kind of presence that demands attention —more like background music you suddenly realize has been playing all along. Your voice in the hallway. The way you hug your books to your chest. The way you tuck your hair behind your ear when you’re reading.

It’s maddening. Soft. Constant.

He catches himself watching you. More than once. More than what’s probably okay. He tells himself it’s harmless. You wouldn’t notice —you never look his way.

But when you walk into a room, it’s like the world shifts to make space for you. Like everything bends around your orbit, and he’s the only idiot pretending not to care.

He laughs with his friends, nods at their jokes, plays along. And then you pass by. And it’s like someone presses pause on his chest.

His eyes follow you. Always. You never turn around.

Still —he watches.

At breakfast, when you stir your tea in slow, absent circles. At the Quidditch pitch, when the wind pulls at your scarf and you don’t bother to fix it. At the library, when you bite your lip, lost in a page he wishes he could be.

It’s not love. He knows that. It’s too early. Too quiet for love.

But there’s something about the way you exist —soft, unhurried, unaware— that’s carved itself into him like a secret. And now it’s all he can do not to say something. Anything.

But how do you start a conversation with someone who feels like a poem you haven’t earned the right to read out loud?

Just a boy, watching a girl who has no idea.

Just a pair of eyes, quietly begging the universe:

“Let her notice me.”